


Stormwinds of Time

by squirenonny



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson, Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: 31 Days of Sadfic, CFSWF, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 06:19:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4380509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Wheel of Time turns, and Desolations come and go. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow. Let the Dragon ride again on the stormwinds of time.</p><p>[Dragon Reborn!Kaladin AU]</p><p>Written for CFSWF 2015</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meetings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ailavyn_Siniyash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ailavyn_Siniyash/gifts).



> This is a fusion crossover (Stormlight characters in Randland following the plot of WoT), and as such is so ridiculously big that I can't possibly write the whole thing. Especially not for a month-long challenge. Scenes are picked more or less at random with sometimes huge gaps in between, so if you aren't familiar with WoT you will not only be spoiled, but confused.
> 
> As of now, contains implied spoilers for _Words of Radiance_ and explicit spoilers through _The Fires of Heaven_. Maybe or may not be updated randomly and without warning.
> 
> [Also, I've only read through _Lord of Chaos_ , so apologies if things aren't entirely accurate.]

Sylphrena had been searching for Kaladin for a long time. Decades, though she hadn’t known it was _him_ she was searching for until these last few months. With so little to go on, and so few she could trust with the search, it had been slow going.

But Syl hadn’t given up, and neither had Ivory, her Warder. Nineteen years and hundreds of children later, he was still by her side. A bit stuffy, maybe, but Sylphrena wasn’t the trouble-making novice she had been. Or the Accepted who had grown a bit better at hiding her guilt and a bit worse at resisting the urge.

It was probably for the best that she had a Warder like Ivory, who kept her focused on her search, and on the prophecies that doomed the world if she should fail. Still, she couldn’t help a sigh as they rode into Emond’s Field.

* * *

Kaladin tried not to fidget as Jasnah shifted her glare from him to Adolin. The Wisdom, in many ways, was about the best two troublemakers could wish for. She had little time for trivial matters, and often passed punishment off to others with a cold stare and a flat rebuke. It was hard to rouse the anger of a woman who spent so much time in research or in conference with the Women’s Circle.

Today, though, Adolin seemed to have crossed that line. Kaladin wasn’t sure why _he_ was there, except that every time his best friend got up to mischief, he pulled Kaladin along like a magnet.

As Jasnah’s lecture dragged on—in that same low, pointed voice, never a shout, never showing a glimmer of emotion beyond cool disdain—Kaladin let his gaze wander. It was almost Bel Tine, and Adolin said the village council had hired an Illuminator for the festival. Not that Kaladin believed Adolin, as a general rule, but the possibility did have him craning his neck for any strangers who might be wandering around.

Adolin caught his eye and grimaced, making a rude gesture toward Jasnah that was hidden behind his hand.

Well, partially hidden.

“There’s no point in hiding that, Adolin,” Jasnah said, as close to snapping as she ever got. “Make the gesture or don’t, but at least have the base courage to stand by your actions.”

Red suffused Adolin’s dark face, and he spluttered out a defense Jasnah brushed off. Kaladin schooled his features and turned his gaze to the far side of the green to keep laughter from bubbling out.

Two strangers sat astride horses near the inn’s stables, watching him. The man was lean and pale, with dark eyes in a stern face. He looked dangerous. Maybe it was the monstrous beast he rode, for nothing about the man himself suggested that the sword on his back was for anything but show.

It was the woman who caught Kaladin’s eyes, though. She was young, though Kaladin couldn’t have put an age to her if asked, with a smooth face and wide eyes and skin nearly as dark as her windswept black hair.

Hastily, Kaladin returned his attention Jasnah, but he felt those eyes on the back of his head until the strangers disappeared into the inn.

* * *

 

Kaladin was bound to Sylphrena now.

He wasn’t sure when, exactly, that had happened—that first moment when their eyes had locked, or when she’d given him and Adolin each a silver coin for moving luggage so sparse even her scrawny companion could have done it. If not then, certainly she’d tied a string around him by the time the Trollocs attacked. Lirin—he _was_ Kaladin’s father, no matter what Kaladin had heard—Lirin had been wounded in the attack, and Syl had healed him.

She was Aes Sedai. Kaladin still couldn’t quite get his head around that. He’d heard stories, but before that night, he’d regarded Aes Sedai and Trollocs both as no more real than the Forsaken. Or at least, no more relevant to Kaladin, a surgeon’s son. A sheepherder, really, since the Wisdom did most of the healing in Emond’s Field.

Now, somehow, the Aes Sedai had dragged Kaladin out of Emond’s Field, out of the Two Rivers altogether. Kaladin, and Adolin, and their friend Shallan, the mayor’s daughter, and a gleeman who called himself Wit.

Kaladin couldn’t decide who was the bigger surprise: his friend Rock, who had made fast friends with Sylphrena, despite her being Aes Sedai, or Jasnah, who had snuck after them, claiming it was the Wisdom’s job to keep the children out of trouble. Children! As if they were toddlers who had wandered off after a butterfly.

Sylphrena didn’t argue against any of them joining the band, just gave a bland smile and a lofty, “The Pattern weaves as the Pattern wills.”

She ruined it somewhat when she broke down giggling, subdued only a little by Ivory’s flat stare. Kaladin could almost sense the exasperation in the Warder’s dark eyes, but it didn’t show on his face, not even when Syl stuck her tongue out at him and kicked her horse to a trot.

It wasn’t fair how natural she looked in the saddle. Adolin either, for that matter, never mind that his father traded horses and Adolin had practically been born riding. Kaladin felt like a sack of potatoes. A sack of very _bruised_ potatoes, by the end of their frantic flight to Taren Ferry. His only consolation was that Rock didn’t look much better.


	2. Shadar Logoth

_Trollocs._

Light! Kaladin was still shaking from it an hour after they’d taken shelter in Shadar Logoth. He held his father’s heron-marked spear—his _father’s_ spear! The thought alone made him feel unsteady—and stuck close to Adolin and Rock as Syl and Ivory secured their position. (Secured how, he wondered? Aes Sedai or not, Syl knew things Kaladin itched to learn. If he was going to get caught up in this world of Trollocs and the One Power, he ought to at least know how to defend himself.)

It didn’t feel safe even gathered all together around a fire with weapons drawn—even Rock, who fingered his bow with distaste, was unwilling to face the shadows unarmed. They felt…alive. Kaladin could have sworn he saw something out there, walking the streets that looked as dark as night even with the sun high overhead.

His fingers tightened around the haft of his spear, trying to ignore Wit’s appraising glance and Shallan’s whispered conversation with Jasnah. Channeling. Kaladin shivered at the thought. He’d known Shallan his whole life, and he couldn’t picture her as an Aes Sedai. Jasnah, maybe, but not Shallan.

The day wore on, and Kaladin’s nerves didn’t ease up with the tense silence hanging over their group.

It was, as usual, Adolin who started trouble, with a glint in his eye and a smile tugging at his mouth and a whisper in Kaladin’s ear.

“ _I have an idea._ ”


	3. Inside a Storm

Weeks later and miles east of Shadar Logoth, Kaladin and Adolin collapsed in a dark room at the back of an inn. Indoors, for once, and warmer and dryer than they’d been since Whitebridge.

Kaladin tried not to think about Whitebridge. About the Fade, about Wit’s flute wrapped up in the cloak in Kaladin’s bag. He should have done something. He should have helped. He should have… _what_? What good was a spear he barely knew how to use against a Myrddraal?

Adolin lay sprawled on a stretch of open floor, moaning as he tugged off one boot. It fell to the floor with a thump, but Adolin didn’t immediately start on the other one. They had been running so hard for so long that it was hard to do anything _but_ run and sleep.

Run and sleep and think about Shallan and Rock and Jasnah. Were any of them still alive? Or had the Trollocs killed them outside Shadar Logoth?

_Burn me, but I even miss Syl._

He hoped she was taking care of the others. Kaladin didn’t trust any Aes Sedai as far as he could throw them, but he thought he might be able to trust Syl in this.

“What are we doing, Kaladin?” Adolin asked, weaving his fingers through his hair. He let out a weak laugh, thin with fear and fatigue. “Fades and Trollocs and bloody Aes Sedai? I never asked for this.”

Kaladin was too tired to argue that it had never been about what they wanted. Syl and Ivory—those two had some sort of plan for Kaladin and his friends. He didn’t know what it was, not yet, but he felt the leash tightening around his neck. Hemmed in by Aes Sedai on one side, by Darkspawn on the other, Fades running them straight into the dark.

There was nowhere safe to go, not anymore. Kaladin thought this cramped, dusty storeroom might be the nicest place he found to rest for a good long while. A bed of canvas sacks and broken chairs, stomachs empty and head pounding for lack of sleep.

Light help him, he didn’t want to walk out that door ever again. The world had become a dark, dangerous place, or maybe it had always been that way and he’d only just become aware of it. Either way, each morning it took a little more effort to stand and start walking towards the unknown.

“Kaladin?” Adolin pulled himself upright and leaned toward Kaladin, squinting.

“Hmm?”

“I was just thinking—”

Whatever it was, Adolin didn’t get a chance to say it. The storeroom door burst open and a figure charged through, backlit, a sword raised in silhouette. Kaladin shouted, scrambling to his feet, groping for his spear.

The figure bore down on him.

A storm raged outside. Wind pounded the roof and walls, rattling wood and roof tiles, reaching out invisible fingers to pry at the windows. Kaladin fought for his life, Adolin shouting and slashing with his knife nearby, but Kaladin’s mind reached for the howling wind outside. What was a surgeon’s son next to the storm’s wrath?

A flash of light, and the night fell still.

* * *

“Kaladin! Burn you, Kaladin, wake up!”

Adolin’s voice. Frantic.

“Kaladin! Kaladin!”

Kaladin couldn’t feel his body. He floated in darkness, pain flickering at the edge of his awareness, a vague allover ache that couldn’t punch a hole in the void around him.

“Kaladin! Burn you, Kaladin, you’re _not_ leaving me alone.”

Adolin _heaved_ and Kaladin’s world lurched. He hung in Adolin’s grip for a moment, then dropped back to the floor, the jolt yanking his mind firmly back into his body. Kaladin gasped, and sat up so fast he felt the wind as Adolin jerked back.

Rain fell like mist, cooling Kaladin’s feverish skin, plastering his hair to his skull. He shivered uncontrollably, arms like wet hay, feeling like someone had turned his stomach to lead.

The storage room was in shambles, walls shredded and twisted to splinters, the roof simply gone. Fires glowed here and there among the wreckage, sizzling where the rain reached it. Through the gaping hole overhead, the storm clung to life, much of its fury already spent.

“Light, Kaladin,” Adolin said, breathless, groping for his arm with a shaking hand. “I thought you were dead.”

“I’m not,” Kaladin said. He staggered to his feet, head throbbing, and turned around. His eyes found their attacker, and he quickly turned away. “What happened?”

“Lightning, I think.” Adolin pressed a hand to the wall—what was left of it—and staggered to his feet. “Bloody _lightning_! Even the whether’s trying to kill us now. Where’s that—that man? You think it might have killed him?”

Kaladin deliberately avoided looking at the body. “He’s dead.”

“You sure?” Adolin squinted at Kaladin. “How can you see anything? It’s too bloody dark.”

Kaladin went cold. He picked his way across the wreckage and laid his hand on Adolin’s shoulder.

Adolin jumped halfway out of his skin. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“I didn’t.”

Shouts from the inn’s main building, which stood largely untouched by the lightning strike, caught Kaladin’s attention. His eyes slid sideways, stopping before they found the body.

“We need to go.”

* * *

They walked, Kaladin leading Adolin by the hand, both of them more mud than skin, sliding through ruts in the road and flattening themselves in roadside brush whenever a cart or rider appeared through the rain.

Adolin’s eyesight didn’t return that night, nor the next day. When the storm broke and the sun came out, he saw a white haze and a few shadows; nothing clear enough for him to walk far on his own. They avoided towns and farms and slept under the thickest brush cover they could find, cloaks draped over them to ward off some of the rain.

It didn’t help. Those nights were cold, wet, miserable nights, more full of mud than restful sleep. With Adolin stumbling along, a cloth tied around his eyes when the light was bright enough to sting, they made slow progress and dropped exhausted after dark, yet too frightened to sleep.

“You won’t leave me,” Adolin asked in the deep of the second night, as they huddled together in a ditch beside the road. Adolin’s voice was soft, barely audible, but they huddled so close together under Kaladin’s cloak that he could hardly miss the words. “If I can’t keep up—you won’t leave me?” Only at the end did it become a question.

Kaladin squeezed Adolin’s arm. “I won’t leave you, Adolin. Not ever.”

* * *

They ran on, and there was a small, dark corner of Kaladin’s mind that was grateful for Adolin’s temporary blindness. (Light, let it only be temporary!) Kaladin had been ready to give up, too tired to run from peril into peril with no hope of escape—but now. Now, he had a purpose. As long as Adolin needed him, Kaladin couldn’t afford to give up, and getting up in the morning no longer took such a monumental effort.

But the cold and the rain and the sleepless nights took their toll. Kaladin grew hot and cold by turns, vertigo slowing his steps more than Adolin’s blindness. An ache settled behind his eyes and a tremor in his hands that made Adolin’s grip tighten with concern.

“I’m fine,” Kaladin said, setting his jaw against a new wave of chills and a fresh pounding in his head. It was perhaps the most miserable he’d ever felt, but it was nothing, _nothing_ , compared to what would catch them up if they didn’t keep moving.

Adolin squinted at his face—the rain had let up for once, allowing enough light for Adolin to see, though his vision was still shadowed and blurry. “You’re not fine. I think you’ve got a fever, and—”

The vertigo returned, and Kaladin tripped over a rut in the road, nearly pulling Adolin down on top of him.

“Kaladin! Are you alright?” Adolin got his arms under Kaladin’s elbows and hauled him up, grunting. “Burn me, what am I talking about? Of course you’re not alright.” They steadied, Adolin squinting up and down the road, Kaladin leaning more heavily on him than he would have liked. “We’re finding an inn tonight.”

“And paying for it how?” Kaladin pulled away from Adolin and locked his knees, refusing to let the weakness show. They didn’t have time for him to get sick. “You want to try juggling blind, Adolin? And what about Darkfriends?”

Adolin’s hands shook as he pulled Kaladin into motion. It was harder to tell this time who was leading. “They can’t all be Darkfriends,” Adolin whispered.

He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

* * *

They didn’t go to an inn, at least. For all Kaladin’s arguments, Adolin could match him in stubbornness when he wanted to, and Kaladin was too weak from this fever to put up much of a fight.

But by the time the light faded there was no town in sight, just a string of farms spaced widely along the road. Even Adolin couldn’t hope to find better shelter than a barn, and Kaladin couldn’t deny that it would be a relief to sleep under a roof for once. Just as long as more freak lightning didn’t find them like last time.

His head was spinning more than ever, blood roaring in his ears to match the storm brewing outside. Adolin all but dragged him into the barn and helped him to sit.

 _Just for a moment,_ he promised himself. Time to catch his breath and ride out the vertigo, and then he would help Adolin shape the hay into a bed and scrounge up something that might pass for dinner. In just a moment he would…

Kaladin didn’t remember falling asleep, but suddenly he was roused by Adolin lifting him onto a pile of hay. Kaladin’s head had barely touched the damp cloak Adolin gave him for a pillow before sleep took him once more.

It was a troubled sleep, filled with dreams of which Kaladin was only partly aware. He wandered through a void, leaving himself behind. His body, his memories, the world around him seemed to fade. Sylphrena was there, reaching out for him, but she couldn’t span the chasm that separated them.

Then he was alone, still wandering, the world spinning around him. He opened his eyes to darkness, to the roof of the barn, to a starry night sky, to a forest consumed by flames. He was…he was… Who _was_ he?

The answer to that question seemed a long way off, and the not knowing circled him like a snake, slowly constricting, squeezing the breath from his lungs.

A cool hand on his forehead pushed back the dreams.

“Who are you?” asked a familiar voice. Adolin’s voice. “You’re Kaladin Lirinson, that’s who. You’re a bull-headed, horse-faced idiot. But you’re _my_ idiot, so just take it easy.”

There was something so comforting in that that Kaladin drifted off without a single dream to bother him. It was a light sleep, though, and Kaladin woke more than once to Adolin checking on him. He wondered, briefly, in the moments between sleep, whether Adolin was getting any rest at all.


	4. The Dragon Reborn

More weeks passed, and more miles. Kaladin and Adolin found their friends—all but Wit. That loss still stung, the guilt still weighted down Kaladin’s hands, still curled around the cloak-and-flute bundle in his carrysack like wet wool. His shoulders bowed under the weight of it.

If that was the worst of it, he might have been able to bear it. But Adolin nearly died, wrapped up in the snare of a dagger he’d taken from Shadar Logoth, and Kaladin saw too late to help. Only Sylphrena’s timely return saved him, and bound Kaladin more tightly to her. He couldn’t even bring himself to be angry with her, only to wonder what would come of being tied to an Aes Sedai.

And there was Rock, too, who kept his head bowed and his eyes hidden by the fringe of his hair. Who fingered the axe at his hip and whispered with a hollow voice that he had killed, that he had killed men, that he thought he had lost himself somewhere on the road to Caemlyn.

It all added to Kaladin’s burden, heavier for Kaladin’s powerlessness. If he couldn’t even save himself, how could he hope to save his friends?

Their path took them north, through the Ways with their unseen terrors to Shienar and to the Eye of the World.

* * *

Kaladin stood atop a tower in Fal Dara. Below, the city celebrated—not the fall of the Dark One. No, Kaladin knew that was still a long way off; but he had been beaten back for a time, and in the Borderlands that was cause for celebration.

“You knew.”

Kaladin turned to Sylphrena. If she was surprised that he’d heard her approach she didn’t show it, just gave him a sad smile and joined him at the parapets.

“You knew I could channel,” he said again, not quite as angry as the first time. He was too tired for anger now, and it left a hollowness in his chest. “How long?”

“I couldn’t really be sure until you used _saidin_ at the Eye…”

“How long?”

Syl paused, then breathed out a sigh. “I had my suspicions ever since we met in Emond’s Field. You’re _ta’veren_ , Kaladin. Stronger than anyone the world has seen in hundreds, maybe thousands of years. The prophecies—”

“Prophecies?”

“Of the Dragon.”

Kaladin went cold. Bad enough to be a man who could channel, but the Dragon Reborn? The man it was said would break the world anew? “I’m not him. I’m just a surgeon’s son.”

Sighing, Syl leaned her arms on the parapets and looked down on the streets far below. “You’re more than you know, Kaladin. You need to accept it, and tell those who can help you.”

“Tell--! Light! I can’t go around telling people I’m the bloody Dragon Reborn.” Enough people already wanted to gentle him for channeling—he’d seen it in Jasnah’s eyes, at least, though Shallan had the decency to look conflicted. If they heard him claim to be the Dragon…

Syl laid a hand on his arm. “Think about it,” she said. “I’ll be here if you need me.”

She left him then, and Kaladin stared out over the city, the wind catching his hair. His eyes went north, toward Shayol Ghul. Think about it, she’d said.

Kaladin doubted he’d be able to _stop_ thinking about it. Not for a long time to come.


	5. The Mountains of Mist

Renarin sat by the cookfire, pretending to help Rock with the stew. Rock was too nice to say anything, but the last time Renarin had tried to help, he’d burned it so badly even Gaz wouldn’t touch it. The grizzled Shienaran’s one eye had almost been a match for the ghastly red one painted on his eye patch.

But Renarin needed to do something, so he sat by the fire with Rock, who kept fingering the axe at his waist and grimacing. A falcon appeared for a moment on his shoulder, both of it and Rock glowing with an aura the same golden color as Rock’s eyes.

Renarin blinked, and the visions were gone.

He tried not to sigh. There had been more visions since he’d first met Kaladin in Baerlon than ever before. Renarin had spent so much time around Aes Sedai since then—not to mention _ta’veren_ —that he’d all but forgotten what it was like not to glimpse the future every time he lifted his eyes.

 _Better here than back at the White Tower_ , he told himself, and not for the first time. He hadn’t decided yet whether he believed himself. Here, despite Sylphrena and Ivory, despite Kaladin and Rock bringing visions with them everywhere, Renarin could sometimes forget. Forget the visions, at least; the Shienarans showed him things no more often than other ordinary people.

The banners they had hung by nearly every tent in the small, rocky valley were another matter.

The Dragon Reborn. Kaladin.

It had surprised Renarin no more than anyone else who had seen the battle in the sky. Kaladin against Ba’alzamon. Renarin shivered just thinking of it. Not because of the prophecies of the Dragon—Renarin didn’t put much stock in old riddles that had been copied and translated countless times.

What scared him was what those banners did to Kaladin.

As if Renarin’s thought had summoned him, Kaladin burst out of Sylphrena’s tent, storm-faced and coiled tighter than a snake about to strike.

Syl tumbled out after him, shot a look around the camp. At the sight of two dozen Shienaran soldiers watching, she stood spear-straight and smoothed her face. “Where are you going, Kaladin?” she asked, straining for Aes Sedai cool and falling short.

Kaladin stalked toward a gap between tents, not turning. “Away.”

“I wasn’t finished with you.”

He spun, eyes flashing. Dark eyes, and cold. They hadn’t been that cold in Baerlon. “You don’t own me, Sylphrena.”

Bristling, Syl closed the distance between them. “I never said I did. I’m just trying to help you, Kaladin. Guide you to—”

“Maybe I don’t _want_ your help!”

Sylphrena faltered, her face losing its mask of calm. “Kaladin, please…”

He turned on his heel. “Don’t follow me.”

Sylphrena watched as Kaladin stormed up the hill and out of the camp. Then, abruptly, she remembered the watching army and disappeared back inside her tent. Ivory, who had watched the exchange in silence, followed.

Renarin did his best to focus on the stew, but his eyes, like Rock’s, kept wandering to the path Kaladin had taken.

“He wants to be alone,” Renarin said, as much to himself as to Rock, but the blacksmith grunted in surprise and bent even lower over his cauldron. Blushing, Renarin pulled his own attention back from Kaladin. _I should respect his wishes._

Renarin’s resolve didn’t last long.

Rock had the stew well in hand; the Shienarans were all busy with the horses and the weapons, hauling wood and patching tents; even Rlain was buried so deeply in the book he’d decided to write that Renarin would have felt bad pulling his attention away.

So he followed Kaladin’s footsteps, caught between concern and guilt. A few moments in Baerlon, stories from Shallan and Jasnah in Tar Valon, and a chasm between them the last months in the Mountains of Mist did not provide Renarin much insight. Kaladin might be angry with Renarin for following him, or he might be grateful. The command to leave him alone might have been meant for Sylphrena alone.

It didn’t really matter. Kaladin was hurting, and Renarin would do what he could to help.

Renarin had just passed the last of the tents when he felt it. A faint tremble underfoot. A sudden, bone-deep chill in the air. It could have been nothing.

He knew it was not.

Scrambling up the hill to the cleft in the tall stone wall that sheltered the camp. Renarin doubted many people knew the narrow passage here existed; once when wandering the edges of the valley he’d spotted Kaladin disappearing through the narrow opening.

Renarin squeezed through now, trying not to think about the tons and tons of stone pressing down around him and the howling wind and tremors in the earth, either of which might bring the cliff down on Renarin’s head.

The passage opened up as he sidled along it. Wind howled in his ears and clawed at his clothing, coiled around his back to drive him onward. Icy chill became a furnace heat became air so dry Renarin’s eyes ached. He forced himself onward, until he stumbled out into a small, round hollow in the stone with a shallow pool on one side.

Kaladin knelt in the center of the hollow, arms wrapped around himself, forehead nearly touching the ground. The air around him shimmered with flashes of heat that hit Renarin like whips. Dust swirled around him, and leaves. He howled, a sound swallowed up by the roar of the wind.

“Kaladin!” Renarin raised his arm to shield his eyes from the stinging wind and dragged himself forward, fighting to stay upright. A rock the side of his head flashed past, missing him by inches.

There was nothing to do but press on. Kaladin showed no signs of hearing him, no signs that he was aware of anything at all, even the wind surrounding him like every winter storm condensed to the space of a farmhouse.

But then, finally, Renarin reached him and stretched out a trembling hand to touch Kaladin’s shoulder.

Kaladin jerked.

The wind died.

His head came up, eyes wide with fear and confusion, bright with unshed tears. He tried to pull back, but stiffened. A hand went to his side, to the unhealed wound he’d received in his fight with Ba’alzamon.

Heart aching, Renarin reached out again for Kaladin.

“Don’t,” Kaladin gasped. He pulled himself together with visible effort, breathed deeply, and met Renarin’s gaze with a look that better passed for Aes Sedai cool than anything Sylphrena could manage. “What are you doing here? I could have killed you.”

“You wouldn’t,” Renarin said softly, and dropped his gaze. Not, for once, because of the visions, though Kaladin always seemed to have something about him.

It might have been easier if this _was_ from a vision; at least then Renarin could have distanced himself from the fluttering in his stomach and the heat in his cheeks.

“Are you all right?” he mumbled.

“Fine.” Kaladin pushed himself to his feet, swayed, and caught himself before Renarin could steady him. “You should go.” Renarin hesitated, and Kaladin’s mask began to slip. “Please,” he said, and the plea seemed to shake Kaladin more than the One Power. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Renarin couldn’t make himself argue with Kaladin, not like this, and so he went, leaving Kaladin slumped against the basin’s wall.

By dawn, Kaladin had vanished.


	6. Son of Battles

_Run duelist. Run gambler. Run, Son of Battles._

_Run.  
_

Adolin stumbled through the twisted doorway back into the cluttered storeroom beneath the Stone of Tear. _Run._ The word echoed in his head, and he wasn’t sure if it was the creatures from the doorway with their prophecies and their half-answers, or if it was his own fear, his blood pounding in his ears.

Rhuidean. The Daughter of the Nine Moons. Son of Battles.

 _I’m no hero,_ he thought, distantly, floating in a haze of panic and weak knees. _I’m not some bloody hero, not like Kaladin. Light!_

Go to Ruidean, they’d said. Why? The _last_ place Adolin wanted to go was the Wastes. The last place he wanted to go, if he was being brutally honest, was wherever Kaladin had his mind set on going.

He leaned against a stack of dusty crates half-covered by a cloth and let out a shaky laugh. “ _Ta’veren_ ,” he muttered. “This is what comes of being _ta’veren_. Burn you, Kaladin.”

Light glimmered beneath the surface of the twisted doorway, growing until the room was a forest of shadows. With one final flash, the light faded, and Kaladin stood there, stone-faced, staring at Adolin with hollow eyes.

Adolin froze.

He’d been doing is best to avoid Kaladin ever since the night they took the Stone, and so far he’d done a pretty good job of it. Kaladin— _Lord_ Kaladin, now, _my Lord Dragon_ to some, and that still turned Adolin’s stomach—Kaladin was too busy with Aes Sedai and High Lords and Aiel and Light alone knew what else to come to the inns and taverns down by the docks. So that was where Adolin spent all his time. Almost all his time.

“Adolin,” Kaladin said. There was a hint of surprise in his face, though his voice was as hard and distant as any High Lord’s. His eyes flickered back toward the doorway. “You went through? Did you learn anything?”

“Did you?”

Suspicion covered Kaladin’s face. It would have made Adolin laugh if he didn’t feel so sick. Kaladin looked years older than the last time Adolin had seen him. Or maybe he _had_ looked old and weary on Toman Head, and Adolin had been so blinded by the dagger he hadn’t seen.

Maybe Adolin had changed as much, in his own way, between the dagger and his Luck and the phrases in the Old Tongue that bubbled up now and again—and now these prophecies.

One reason or another, it made no difference. When he looked at Kaladin, it was like looking at a stranger.

The doorway flashed again, and Sylphrena appeared, jumping at the sight of them and then smoothing her dress. She eyed Adolin, smiling to herself, then fixed her attention on Kaladin. Just as well; Adolin wasn’t eager to have any Aes Sedai take an interest in him.

Kaladin should have been used to it, though. Syl had claimed him from day one, and even Adolin could see there would be no escaping her designs.

He faced her stoically now, though Adolin read tension in his shoulders and in the blanched knuckles of his fists. “Sylphrena Sedai,” he said, nodded stiffly, and turned for the door.

“Don’t go,” she called, almost a question.

Kaladin stopped, though he didn’t turn.

“Talk to me, Kaladin. Please.”

Kaladin turned, eyes cold. Adolin could feel the jagged edges between them, cutting knives that threatened to destroy one or the other if Sylphrena pushed too hard.

“You can trust me.”

“No,” Kaladin said. “I can’t.”


	7. Sylphrena

“I killed Danlan.”

Adolin’s voice was level, his face grim—Light, but Kaladin couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his friend smile—but there was a hollowness in his eyes as he told his story. Danlan, the Maiden he’d been spending so much time with, had tried to kill him.

“And I killed her,” Adolin finished. He repeated it, almost too soft to hear, and fingered the hilt of his black-bladed sword. The raven’s etched into the blade, and the words written in the Old Tonuge, made Kaladin shiver more than Adolin’s admission.

“You had no choice,” Kaladin said. He wished he could find more words, or better, but Adolin just gave him a lopsided smile with no substance and shrugged.

Awkward silence grew between them, though it didn’t last long. Kaladin stepped out of his rooms, Adolin at his side, and came face to face with twenty Maidens of the Spear. They weren’t veiled, but Kaladin suspected the restraint didn’t come easy to some.

Eshonai stood at their head, though she had, officially, given up the spear to study with the Wise Ones.

Shallan stood beside Eshonai, arms crossed, freckles darker than ever after her months with the Aiel.

Adolin faltered at the sight of them, and Kaladin couldn’t blame him. He couldn’t decide which woman looked more prepared to take his head off. It was all Kaladin could do not to embrace _saidin_. “What’s going on?”

“A precaution,” said Eshonai. “You go to face a Forsaken, yes?” Her voice held a warning note that made Kaladin’s hair stand on end.

“I do.”

Shallan’s eyes darted to Adolin, then back to Kaladin. Once, that brief look might have told Kaladin everything he needed to know, but Shallan had spent too much time with Aes Sedai and with Wise Ones, and she’d learned to play their games. By now, she was as good as Aes Sedai herself, whatever the Tower said.

She smiled at him now, probably amused by his consternation. Kaladin resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at her.

Eshonai shifted her stance, drawing Kaladin’s eyes back to her. “You are taking us, no doubt.”

“Is that what this is about?” Kaladin asked, smiling, though that made some of the Maidens’ hands twitch toward their veils. “ _Far Dareis Mai_ carries my honor, does it not?”

Eshonai lifted her chin while the Maidens behind her raised their spears, their shouts echoing down the corridor.

As though summoned by the noise, Sylphrena appeared around the corner. She looked like a queen, in her silks and gemstones, her hair done up in an elaborate smile. Kaladin smiled at her.

She tried for a smile in return, but it faltered, and Kaladin’s good mood with it. She’d changed since Rhuidian, become more sober and more open both. She’d taught Kaladin a great deal, guiding him as he gathered the Aiel and retook Caemlyn and Cairhien. With Adolin and Shallan caught up in their own schemes, with Rock back in the Two Rivers—Kaladin couldn’t hate him for that, for getting away from the killing; it was good that one of them, at least, would have a chance at happiness—with Jasnah and Wit and Lift off in hiding with the exiled Aes Sedai—

With the Pattern tugging them all apart, Syl had become Kaladin’s last, greatest confidante. She alone was always there for him, always with a smile and a promise that the Pattern knew what it was doing.

Now, seeing her so obviously troubled, Kaladin began to worry.

“We’re just about ready to go,” he said as she approached. The Maidens quieted themselves, except for a few trailing whoops and shouts of laughter.

Syl nodded, then smiled at Adolin. “I knew you’d come.”

He flushed, tugged his strange hat lower over his eyes. Sylphrena giggled.

Her mirth faded too quickly, and she brushed Kaladin’s arm with her fingertips. “It’s almost time,” she said. “There’s something you need to see at the docks.”

* * *

Dead.

So many dead.

Kaladin spun his spear of Fire, cutting through a wagon Lanfear tossed his way.

Around him, the bodies of the dead. Maidens, Cairhienin. Kaladin had not woven his shield of Air fast enough to save them all.

Shallan still channeled behind him, though weakly. She had been hit by the same weave that had dropped Eshonai, boneless, to the paving stones. Their screams still echoed in Kaladin’s ears. He had not seen Adolin since he landed, limp and bloody, near the water. Ivory tried and failed to stand somewhere beyond Lanfear.

Wrapped in the Void, Kaladin ignored them all. Ignored them as best he could. His concentration wavered, and fear and guilt hammered him from just outside the Void. Something darker and colder worked its way around his awareness, searching for cracks in his composure.

Dead bodies, strewn across another battlefield.

Glassy eyes, torn limbs. Blood flowing down a familiar face. A body, swinging from a noose, that reminded Kaladin of Adolin and almost drew his eyes away from Lanfear.

_Dead._

One of Syl’s wagons full of _angreal_ burned in the stillness. Those who had not fled or found somewhere to hide were dead now, or hurt so gravely they did not move; only Kaladin and Lanfear remained standing.

_All dead. Mat. Perrin. Oh, Light, forgive me!_

No, not only Kaladin and Lanfear. Syl, too, remained, her dress torn, her face blank and her eyes sad and tired and ancient. Lanfear’s eyes shifted to her, and a wall of fire bore down on her.

Distant awareness rose, an echo of a memory of that weave, and Kaladin cut the flows.

_Egwene. Aviendha. Min. Light! I have brought this on you all._

The flames vanished, and Kaladin did not see Syl. Light let her have hidden beneath the wagons. Let no one else have died because of him.

_Faces, dead. Friends. Allies. Their screams haunted him. All his fault._

“Come to me, Rand al’Thor,” Lanfear whispered. “Come to me, Lews Therin.”

A flicker, a voice more distant than the one Kaladin had grown familiar with. _My heart has always belonged to another. Ilyena, my love._ And then, louder, _I am Rand al’Thor!_

Kaladin tamped down on the voices. _I am me_ , he thought, he screamed, and he locked the memories away outside the Void.

“Give it up, Lanfear! I’ll die before I love a Forsaken.”

Rage twisted Lanfear’s smooth face. “Then you will die.”

Pain filled him, a burning, raging storm howling, beating on the Void. It wavered, and Kaladin clung to it with everything that he had. If he lost the Void, if he lost _saidin_ , he was dead, and his protection would crumble. Shallan and Eshonai, Adolin and Ivory. Syl. The other Maidens, and the Cairhienin screaming beyond his shield. They would all die.

Kaladin’s bones screamed, and he howled, and he took _saidin_ in hand and wove clubs of Air, swift blows to hammer Lanfear, to knock her unconscious and helpless, as helpless as a babe.

She saw his intentions. Smiling, still holding onto her weave, she stopped the clubs in midair, but the effort drove her backwards, until she came up against one of the wagons. A wagon full of _angreal_ and _ter’angreal_ , full of weapons Lanfear could use to end him.

She smiled, and turned, and Rand al’Thor raged inside Kaladin’s head.

And as Lanfear turned and climbed into the wagon, her hand reaching for a silver disc atop the heap, suddenly Syl was there, small and battered and fierce, her mouth set, her motions sure. She grappled Lanfear, wrestled her back, back to the twisted doorway half-covered by a cloth.

For a moment they teetered, straddling the doorway. Lanfear screamed, and Syl turned toward Kaladin.

She smiled.

And then, they were gone.


End file.
